The phenomenon of the chess game in the art of the XX century

Balbekova Irina Mikhailovna Postgraduate student, Department of General Humanities and Social Sciences /Department of Theory and History of Art, Autonomous Non-profit Organization of Higher Education "Institute of Contemporary Art" 121309, Russia, Tsentral'nyi Federal'nyi Okrug avtonomnyi okrug, g. Moscow, ul. Novozavodskaya, 27a balbekova77@mail.ru Other publications by this author

     Of the four mental functions – sensation, intelligence, feelings and intuition, intelligence, cold calculation, calculation of options, position analysis, etc. are of the most important importance for the chess game. And a chess player should not give in to feelings and emotions, because this will lead to mistakes and inevitable loss. Traditional visual art appealed primarily to the aesthetic feelings of the viewer, while Duchamp forced the viewer to think about the idea, the concept embedded in the work, while granting the right to freedom of interpretation and understanding.     In 1968, in an interview with the BBC with Joan Blackwell, Duchamp stated about the conceptual mantle when he said that until his time painting was retinal, what you could see... and that he made her intellectual^[12].

    In the XX century, the passion for chess was a common phenomenon, especially in the artistic, intellectual and scientific environment. Chess did not just act as an object for the plot, but influenced the formation of the aesthetic, artistic and philosophical positions of the artist.

In 1944, John Cage created "Chess Pieces", in which the concept of "music of chance" was already guessed. Actually, it was a drawing made in gouache and ink, depicting a chessboard and a sheet music mill. The composer himself prepared this drawing for the exhibition "The Image of Chess", which took place in the winter of 1944-1945 in the New York gallery of J. Levy and organized by M. Ernst and M. Duchamp. Cage, perhaps, for the first time combined the seemingly incongruous – chess and music, with his inherent desire for experiment, the search for something new, the element of chance. This is a riddle, a "visual pun", a game that forces you to look for possible options for the development of a melodic line. Since the musical notation of the composition is similar to a chessboard, it is permissible to assume that two performers can play a game or one pianist can perform music, moving from cell to cell as a pawn, bishop or queen moves ^[13].  The pianist M. L. Tan tried to decipher this canvas, but it turned out that the composer was only approaching the idea of aleatorics, which was actually embodied only a few years later.

The appeal to the "chess theme" in Cage's work is not accidental. The number "64" also appears in the "I Ching", which in turn represents one of the many methods of divination that existed in China and other Asian countries - by tossing coins to determine the number of a hexagram with a description of possible events.

 In 1950 Cage got acquainted with the "Book of Changes" and soon developed the "method of random actions", first used in the finale of the Concert for prepared piano and chamber orchestra and "Sixteen Dances" (1951).

Cage's work as a whole was a constant search for means of avoiding personal choice and the study of procedures that free music from dependence on both the composer and the performer. Randomness served Cage as a kind of interdimensional "corridor" through which elements of another art form penetrated into the sphere of one art form ^[14].

While Duchamp's influence on Cage is undeniable, Cage's public admission was typically cryptic. The most direct statement he has ever made is contained in the preface to a work he wrote called "26 Statements of Duchamp", which consists of statements made by other people about the artist and possibly selected and collected by chance, since many of Cage's works were created in this way.

   Exploring the vector of the chess game in the work of Duchamp, it is also impossible to ignore the topic of his creative interaction with another chess partner – a great writer  By Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), the brightest representative of literary modernism. The theme of the "endgame", which appears here as a "nodal point", is connected with Beckett's most famous play and understanding of Duchamp's complex attitude to his artistic activity.

Both were keen chess players and met regularly to play games.

Although Beckett never thought about becoming a professional chess player, the game of chess continuously permeated his entire life.

In the novel "Murphy", written by Beckett during this period, chess is the central source of images, and "Beckett's love for chess and his interest in Democritus and the pre-Socratic philosophers add up here in a bizarre mixture" (Knowlson, 199). According to James Knowlson, "he was deeply disappointed that his "cherished idea" for the book cover, a photograph of two monkeys playing chess, was postponed..." Beckett's friendship with the Dutch artist Geer Van Velde also included the indispensable regular chess sessions ^[15].  Beckett also read chess literature with enthusiasm. In the late 1960s, Beckett "regularly studied chess columns in Le Monde and spent hours playing chess against himself, reproducing some of the famous games described in the books "The Best Games". It is possible that he also read Duchamp's chess column in the Paris newspaper Ce Soir in 1937, but it was mostly during that year that he traveled to Germany.

Their shared passion for chess throughout their lives suggests that since the game was an important part of both artists' lives, it inevitably influenced their thinking and, consequently, their work. This argument was most often made in relation to Duchamp.

Cartesian features of the chess game may well have been what attracted Beckett to the game. Descartes fascinated Beckett so much that in his first published poem "Voroscope" some details of the philosopher's biography were touched upon. His novel "Murphy" can partly be seen as a satire on the mocking Cartesianism of its main character. It is known that in this novel the central scene is devoted to a useless game of chess. Thus, for both artists, chess could offer in different ways a model of systematic thinking, the rationalism of enlightenment and a purified method that they could admire and enjoy in the artificial game space of chess, while in their works they ridiculed this world.

Let's consider what the endgame means in Samuel Beckett's "creative party".   "Endgame" is one of Beckett's most highly regarded plays, and over the years it has been well received by its audience and has evoked a response from many critics and scholars. The bulk of academic criticism, however, has focused on the dramatic text as an intellectual enigma, suggesting that the inadequacy of the language in the play is represented as its meaninglessness. Such interpretations inevitably assume that the "meaning" in the context of the play does not come from language. At the same time, Beckett's disillusionment with language was generally recognized as a critical discourse. In this state, the sense of time is completely lost in the cancellation of words and time. For example, about the language of silence, Leslie Kane writes that "Beckett's drama is characterized by a deviation from the word" ^[16], and Theodor Adorno argues that understanding the "Endgame" can mean nothing else than understanding its incomprehensibility" ^[17].

The philosopher and critic Stanley Cavell argues that: "the discovery of the Endgame, both in theme and technique, is not a failure of meaning (if it means no meaning), but its total, even totalitarian success is our inability not to mean what we are given to mean" ^[18].

Nevertheless, as Michel Henri pointed out, the purpose of a work of art is to allow someone to see something, in a double sense, perceiving both as a vision and as an understanding.: "the greatest minds, ultimately, sought knowledge in art, true or "metaphysical" knowledge capable of going beyond the external the appearance of phenomena in order to lead us to their innermost essence" ^[19]. Beckett accomplished this by discrediting the physical movement. Physical movements may not be about something, but about something in itself, but they are also part of an excessive system of memories that cause them to echo in the structure of the play, like poetic techniques or tropes. As such, they evoke an act of imagination in the viewer. To the extent that the viewer is a sense-forming being, physical movements expand his awareness of meaningfulness, since he learns to look for meaning not in the dialogue, but somewhere outside it.

     Chess is primarily a game. Our whole life is also a kind of game. Especially in the psychology of a professional chess player. Did Duchamp perceive his life in art as a game? Obviously yes. But the game is complex, multi-layered, requiring mental tension, concentration, flight of thought and imagination, but at the same time with ease and humor.  

      Marcel Duchamp's creative legacy is small. In the twenties, he almost completely abandoned painting. Duchamp was against the replication of similar works, considered it commerce, the costs of bourgeois society. Each work should be piece-by-piece, unique, like a chess game! Although the initial conditions are always the same – the pieces are placed in their places, chess openings are well studied and widely used. Just like canvas, brushes and paints are the same, and the first actions of the artist are also standard – priming, sketches, sketches, first strokes. But the further development of events on the board is always for the first time and unique! As it should be in art, according to Duchamp.

The chessboard consists of 64 white and black squares, traditional sets of pieces are also painted in these opposite colors. The struggle of opposites, which does not allow compromises and shades. Two extremes, two poles, two worlds, two rivals, each of which strives to assert its superiority, its dominant position, its self! Hence Duchamp's unappreciative statements about the death of art, that artists are the same people as everyone else and do not possess any exceptional qualities, that aesthetics and tastes do not matter in art and only interfere with the understanding of the idea.

      This is the direction in which art should move: towards intellectual expression ^[20]. When you look at the formation of the pieces on the board, you mean the mental end. The transformation of the visual aspect into gray matter is what always happens in chess and what should happen in art ^[21].